How did the language of healing in the Mennonite Brethren in Christ/ United Missionary/ Missionary and EMCC “Articles of Faith” change over time? What does it tell us about EMCC thinking about divine healing? Many denominations do not bother to state anything about healing at all.
The earliest Discipline in the Missionary Church Historical Trust collection is the Evangelical United Mennonite Church edition of 1880 published in Goshen, Indiana. It makes no mention of divine healing. “Of Healing the Sick” was Article XIV in the 1888 Discipline, and was a simple confidence in the power and willingness of God to heal in answer to prayer.1 The language of “healing in the atonement” was in place quite soon (1892). The Article had to undergo some editorial work to get the scriptural references right, though! I myself have worked through the 2013 EMCC Articles of Faith and Practice minutely and found what looks like a Scripture reference typo, uncorrected after four years.2 Maybe this means that while people worked and debated hard to revise doctrinal statements, once they have been published, EMCC members tend to relax their attention, not knowing how to make use of such statements. As I note in my biography of Sam Goudie (coming out soon, God willing), the EMCC has not been a very doctrinally-vigilant denomination.
Still numbered as Article XIV, the statement in 1924 read: “All sickness is the result of sin directly or indirectly. John [should read “Job”] 2:7; Luke 13:16; Acts 10:38; John 5:14; Deut. 28:15-23; Lev. 26:16. God has made provision in the atonement for the healing of the body. Isa. 53:3,4 (R.V.), with Matt. 8:16,17; I John 3:8. The mode given us for the healing of the sick is the laying on of hands, and anointing with oil and praying over them.–Mark 16:17,17 [should read 18]; Jas. 5:14,15; Mark 6:13.”3
By 1944, while the text was the same, the Scripture references were altered: Lev. 26:16; Deut. 28:15-23; Job 2:7; Luke 13; [should be a colon] 16; Acts 10:38; John 5:14 were the first set, the next remained the same except the Isaiah 53 text had been extended to verse 5, and Mark 16 [should be 6]:13; 16:17,18; Jas. 5:14,15 rounded out the third group of references.4
Editorial corrections to 1951 have been applied except that Mark 16:13 still had not been corrected to 6:13. The text remained the same as 1924.5
Perhaps in preparation for a hoped-for merger with the Missionary Church Association, a new text in 1965 now said, “Since all sickness is fundamentally the result of the fall of man, we believe that healing for the body is provided in the atonement of Christ. This benefit may be realized by God’s Children as they express faith and desire, and meet the conditions set forth in God’s Word.”
This time the references were footnoted after each major phrase, a helpful editorial practice. The first, after “the fall of man,” listed Genesis 3:16-19; Job 2:7; Acts 10:38. The second set, after the word “Christ,” listed Isa. 53:4,5; Matt. 8:16,17; I Peter 2:24, and after “God’s Word”: Mark 6:13; 16:17,18; James 5:13-16.6
The proposed Constitution for the merging of the MCA and the United Missionary Church about 1968 finally corrected the Mark 6 reference, but was identical to the 1965 text of the UMC. It was to be a paragraph (d) under the section 4) Salvation, implying that healing is related to (not merely an illustration of) salvation, quite a biblical idea, as I mentioned in the first blog on healing.7 Nazarene theologian Ray Dunning mentions this.8 The idea that salvation is bigger than “redemption of humans from sin” or even humanity, as in Romans 8:21 where Creation groans waiting for its own liberation, has been taken up in current systematic theology including many evangelical theologians.9 This is an insight that I heartily approve.
Faith or Practice? By 1977, the article on Divine Healing had been removed to section 2 in the Articles of Practice. The text read, “In the redemptive work of Christ, provision has been made for man’s physical healing. This benefit may be realized by God’s children on the basis of the conditions set forth in God’s Word.”
Following this are the very same scriptures as in the 1965 UMC Constitution without being connected to the parts of the statement.10 “The redemptive work of Christ” is a phrase that comes from Christian and Missionary Alliance literature, and means practically the same as “in the atonement of Christ.”
What does it mean to place a “doctrine” in the articles of “practice”? For the doctrine of non-resistance,11 this set it on a trajectory to being eliminated or watered down to almost pointlessness, as Dr Thomas Dow remarked in a Systematic Theology class at Emmanuel Bible College around 1979-1980. Once an article of belief-with-actions has been converted into actions-with-a belief, I think it is next door to being an optional practice. This happened to Washing of the Saints’ Feet as an ordinance, which we will look at in a later blog. After a while some will say, why print an option? Simplify the statements! Drop the statement entirely!
Claiming rights? Kevin Blowers, archivist with the Missionary Church archives in Mishawaka, IN, (Bethel University) believes he noted a change between Gospel Banner articles Solomon Eby wrote in 1887 and one Alvin Traub had published in 1914. One confidently argued we can claim healing, while Traub’s introduced the idea of humbly requesting God for healing, allowing God to answer yes or no according to his wisdom.12 Traub’s position seems to be the same as the Missionary Church of today, Blowers says. That suggests Traub was trying to avoid the extravagant claims of faith healers that arose between Eby’s essay and Traub’s, and still affirm God’s power and willingness to heal in answer to believing prayer, medicine or no medicine. No one doubts God’s ability. The Bible has too many stories of God healing to think that. The EMCC today likewise affirms “God is able to heal, therefore we ought to pray for the sick.”13 This is nearly the same language as the 1888 article of faith.
The Missionary Church of Canada inherited from the binational Missionary Church a statement on Divine Healing in the Articles of Practice.14 After the merger of the Missionary Church of Canada with the Evangelical Church in Canada in 1993, the resulting EMCC adopted the ECC article “Healing” which was in the ECC’s Declaration of Faith,15 with only minor changes, but with the MCoC title “Divine Healing” and placed it in the Articles of Practice.16 Gone was any reference to healing in the redemption or atonement of Christ. I don’t remember discussion about such a change; probably I missed it, being in Nigeria most of the time from 1989-2010.
Something many who teach that we may claim healing as the “children’s bread”17 (A B Simpson was among them) may not have considered, or assumed they understood, is the question of when sickness began in the created world.18 The evidence of the whole fossil record is that animals suffered diseases, predation, injuries and death long before the sin of Adam and Eve acquired human death as a punishment. Thus some sickness among human beings may be part of creation, a process God uses for his purposes, maybe part of the “frustration” creation has been subjected to (Romans 8:20). Entropy is certainly built into the universe as it is now. The groaning of creation can be read as its created form or as a post-Original Sin form, I suppose. I have always assumed lions ate meat, and “tending the garden” involved causing the death of plant life at least. I am not affirming that Adam and Eve were necessarily subject to sickness before their fall, just animals and plants.19 This accepts that the world is as old as the consensus of the geological and astronomical sciences conclude, of course. Those who support a young earth creation interpretation often assert that death and sickness of animals entered into the physical world only after the Original Sin event, an assertion I do not believe justified. I cannot go into this hot question here.
Of the making of books…Ministries, healers, books, booklets, cassettes, CDs, sermons, videos and blogs abound offering healing instruction, methods and exhortation. No Church doubts the power of God to heal us. All are ready to offer prayer for the sick in some form. Some offer prayer with laying on of hands, and anointing with oil. Some ask in humility under the mighty hand of God, some demand health as a right God promised and must respect. I heard a claim that we should, with the right faith, be able to live to 120 years recently! I think mature doctrine respects the wisdom and will of God, and does not claim healing as a right.20
It is never wrong to ask. Cast all your cares upon him and he will exalt you in due time (I Peter 5:6).
Banner: Christian art in Roman catacombs. Jesus healing the woman with the flow of blood. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
1Jasper Abraham Huffman, ed, History of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1920) p 165.
2“Articles of Practice,” FP-2.1.2: footnote 3: I Cor.11:26 should be I Cor. 11:28. From the EMCC website in 2017. In 2023, by action of the General Assembly in Stouffville, ON, the Articles of Practice were not included in Bylaw #1. They are not printed in the website anymore.
3The Doctrines and Discipline of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (New Carlisle, OH: General Conference Executive Committee, 1924) p 18-19.
4The Doctrines and Discipline of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (Elkhart, IN: General Conference Executive Committee, 1943) p 18-19.
5The Doctrines and Discipline of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: General Conference Executive Committee, 1951) p 16-17.
6The Constitution and Manual of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1965) p 16. It appears as paragraph (e) under section 4) Salvation.
7Constitution Proposed as Basis for Union of The Missionary Church Association and The United Missionary Church (np: nd).
8H Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1988) p 245.
9For example, J Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014) p 163.
10Manual and Constitution of the Missionary Church of the United States and Canada (Fort Wayne, IN: General Conference, 1977) p 7.
11EMCC History blogs “Peace and War 1 and 2.”
12Kevin Blowers, “Jesus Christ the Same Yesterday, and Today, and Forever: A Brief Look at How the Practice of Healing Has Changed over Time in the Missionary Church,” Reflections Vol 18-19 (2016-2017) p 16-18.
13EMCC Articles of Practice, “Divine Healing” (2013).
14Missionary Church of Canada Constitution of 1988.
15Eg ECC Discipline of 1988, p 7.
16EMCC Constitution of 1993, p 19.
17Eg Keith M Bailey, Divine Healing: The Children’s Bread: God’s Provision for Human Health and Healing (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1977).
18https://www.icr.org/article/animal-death-before-the-fall#:~:text=Since%20fossils%20are%20the%20preserved,1%20specifically%20mentions%20animal%20death. These popular level articles deny the massive evidence of long-term geological processes.
19https://biologos.org/common-questions/did-death-occur-before-the-fall The American Scientific Association journal Perspectives on Science and Faith has published numerous articles examining suggestions about biological origins. A few have tackled the question of the origin of diseases.
20The Assemblies of God (USA) position paper wisely admits that not all requests for healing are answered as the praying people ask—the Church urges we leave that to the plan of God.
EMCC History 
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